Peter Warr obituary

Peter Warr, left, with Nigel Mansell in Austria in 1983. Relations between the pair were tense. Photograph: Sutton Motorsport

Peter Warr, who has died aged 72 of a heart attack, earned a place in Formula One history as the keeper of the flame at the Lotus team after the sudden death of its founder, Colin Chapman, in 1982. He proved an adept and persuasive motor racing manager when he signed the dynamic young Brazilian driver Ayrton Senna to the British squad at the start of the 1985 season.

A tall man of military bearing – a knee injury had brought his national service with the Royal Horse Artillery to a premature end – Warr first worked for Lotus in 1958 when, at 20, he scrounged a job as assistant sales manager at the fledgling sports-car maker's base in Hornsey, north London.

He at first nurtured his own racing ambitions, purchasing a Lotus 7 which had been specially built for Graham Hill to drive at the traditional Boxing Day Brands Hatch fixture in 1959. He raced it enthusiastically for a couple of seasons before switching to the single-seater Formula Junior category.

It was an exciting and absorbing time for Warr. After working long hours at the Lotus factory, he would then rush off on Friday evenings, towing his car, to get to a race on the continent and be back to start work on Monday morning. He won the Formula Junior Eifelrennen at the Nürburgring at the wheel of a Lotus 20 and made two trips to Japan for races at the newly opened Suzuka circuit, winning the 1963 Japanese grand prix (then a sports car race) in a Lotus 23B.

Warr retired from racing in 1964, and had intended to follow Lotus with its move to Hethel, Norfolk, in 1966. But he changed his mind and decided to quit, in part because the job he really wanted – Lotus F1 manager – had gone to his colleague Andrew Ferguson. In 1969, however, Ferguson tipped Warr off that he was leaving the company. Chapman judged Warr to be the right man for the post, so he was signed up just before the 1969 US grand prix at Watkins Glen, New York, the race where Hill crashed heavily and broke his legs in one of the works Lotus 49s while the other sped to a maiden Formula One victory for the German driver Jochen Rindt.

Warr managed the team through the golden years of the Lotus 72 and was in charge at the time of Rindt's death at Monza in 1970. He then presided over the team's rebirth in 1972, when Emerson Fittipaldi became the youngest world champion to date. This domination continued into 1973, when Ronnie Peterson joined Fittipaldi in the Lotus squad, but over the next two years the team's fortunes began to wane. Then, in the spring of 1975, Warr broke both legs in a road accident.

At the 1976 British grand prix, Warr was approached by the Austro-Canadian oil millionaire Walter Wolf, who had acquired the assets of the bankrupt Williams team. Wolf wanted a clean-sheet approach for 1977 and offered Warr the job of masterminding the project. He accepted.

Chapman was hugely disappointed to have lost his key administrator. For all his outward bluster, the Lotus chief had a keen appreciation of Warr's contribution. Warr could be tart and critical on occasion, and rub people up the wrong way, but he was immensely loyal, and meticulous about the way the team was run. Chapman suggested that he see his detour to Wolf as a "temporary leave of absence".

Jody Scheckter took the new Wolf to second place in the 1977 world championship, a success which was as impressive as it was unexpected, but in the summer of 1981 Chapman, true to his word, wooed Warr back to Lotus.

By this time Chapman had signed Nigel Mansell as his new protege, but Warr found it difficult to deal with the determined young driver from Birmingham. After Chapman died from a heart attack 16 months later, Warr found himself thrust unwillingly into the top job, which further aggravated his tense relationship with Mansell.

After Mansell crashed while leading the 1984 Monaco grand prix in his Lotus-Renault, an exasperated Warr commented that the British driver would never win a grand prix "as long as he has a hole in his backside". This turned out to be wide of the mark, as Mansell went on to win 31 grands prix with Williams and Ferrari. Warr later learned to laugh at his prediction.

Warr went on to make some inspired decisions that temporarily reversed Lotus's decline, including signing the brilliant Senna for the 1985 season. It seems appropriate that Senna won the marque its last grand prix victory, in Detroit in 1987.

Warr left Lotus in 1989, six years before the team folded under the weight of mounting debts. After a brief period as secretary of the British Racing Drivers' Club, he retired to France. He is survived by his wife, Yvonne, a son and a daughter.

• Peter Warr, racing driver and manager, born 18 June 1938; died 4 October 2010